


antipathy

by Zerrat



Category: Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: Bittersweet, F/F, Ficlet, Prompt Fill, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 17:57:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4929520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zerrat/pseuds/Zerrat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fang has no time for Lightning's new role as Savior.</p>
            </blockquote>





	antipathy

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by **pandawisdom** over on Tumblr, and originally posted [here](http://zerrat.tumblr.com/post/108902977850/flight-that-is-one-hell-of-a-mess-please). Vague LR era.
> 
> The fill was meant to be happy, but bitter!Fang made herself known, lol.

"That is one hell of a mess," Lightning said, her voice low and muted in the darkened temple ruins. 

For all that her leather-gloved touch was hesitant, gentle against the bare expanse of Fang’s ribs and side, tracing rapidly-colouring bruises, split flesh and fractured bone, it might as well have been a brand as wicked as any fal’Cie’s. She was close, closer than they’d been in a thousand years, but Fang was hardly in a position to savour it at all. 

“I know. It _is_ my skin I risked.” Fang’s breath hissed out between her teeth as Lightning tugged at the edge of her sari. She really was an idiot for not dodging that earth eater’s haymaker in time, but if _bloody_ Lightning delayed the cure any longer, she was not going to be held responsible for her actions. 

Lightning made a disgusted-sounding click of her tongue, her eyebrows drawn into a tight frown as she considered Fang’s injury. She looked disappointed, Fang noted sourly - as though she felt she had a right to lecture any of them at all.

"What were you thinking?” Lightning asked, shaking her head. For all her disappointment, however, she still seemed muted, as though little of who she’d been remained. “You’re not a l’Cie anymore. This Chaos world is different, and you need to play it smarter-”

“Managed just fine without a fal’Cie’s _gift_ for thirteen years,” Fang cut in, old bitterness rising up in her throat dizzyingly quick. She swallowed, her jaw setting, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t fight years of _questions_ and seeming abandonment. “Managed just fine without you, too, playing white knight as you please.”

Fang’s fingers curled hard about the carved haft of her spear. Crouched before her, Lightning was silent, her reprimands thankfully stilling on her tongue. _Good._ Fang couldn’t stand keeping up the jovial mask that said that nothing was wrong, that Lightning could waltz back into her life at the very end of the world. 

"Fang, I…” Lightning’s voice was hoarse and hesitant, but she didn’t draw her hand away from Fang’s side. After a moment, she pressed her fingers gently against the damaged flesh, cool healing magic bleeding from her fingertips. For a long time, she was silent, working her skills and knitting flesh and bone back together, before adding, “I did what I had to do.”

It sounded like an excuse. Fang’s jaw clenched until it ached with it, until she was shaking all the way down to her bones. 

None of it felt right. 

“You were the one who said she’d fight fate itself,” Fang said, the words coming before she could think to hold them in reserve. “Back then, you gave me _hope_. Savior.” 

The prophesied title was almost a slur on her tongue, no better than _viper_ , for all that she meant Lightning herself no ill will. For all that she so vividly understood the burden of necessity, of taking on a role she couldn’t stomach to dwell on for fear of breaking. Of acting all for the sake of another. 

It was just so rich, seeing _Lightning_ drawn back from whatever role she’d played in Etro’s stead, a rest that even Hope had apparently not been able to rouse her from before he’d gone and vanished, too. A bloody miracle in a world where nothing of the sort could exist, only to then be shoved in the pyrrhic sort of role she’d so abhorred for Fang. 

Fang’s mouth twisted. It was so _hypocritical._ But then, what more had she ever been able to expect from Lightning?

It rose up in her chest like a tidal wave, hot and desperate and yearning. Fang had missed Lightning all these years - and in stasis too. She felt it with a fierceness she’d thought she was incapable of for any but Vanille, fire in the hollowed-out pit that had been her stomach since the War of Transgression. 

When Lightning shifted, withdrawing her hand from smooth, unblemished muscle, Fang reached out and caught her wrist before she could retreat further. Through the feeble grasp, she felt Lightning freeze, still close enough that Fang could feel her breath, warm against her own lips. She watched Lightning’s throat bob as she swallowed, the silence between them so tense she could sliced it with the blades of her lace.

Savior or not, and no matter the long absence, Lightning was still so beautiful. For a moment, it didn’t matter that Fang might not be able to trust her, given how she’d been relegated once more as but a tool of the gods. After all these years, it felt as though even the dark terror of Ragnarok could scarcely compare, given how this woman had been shaped and changed at the whims of the divine. 

"How much of you is left?” Fang wondered aloud, her voice catching oddly in her throat as she met those clear blue eyes. 

“Enough.”

Lightning had hesitated, though. Lightning _never_ hesitated. Fang could never be satisfied with that sort of vague answer, not when it came to Lightning. She couldn’t _trust_ it, that this was really the Lightning she would have followed to hell if need be - not some sick parody the gods had cooked up. 

Fang released Lightning’s wrist gently, but the grasp she still held on her spear was one of white-knuckled desperation. Her smile was false and even as she led her old friend deeper into the temple ruins, determined to make what best she could of a shit situation. 

Such had ever been her fate, talks of miracles be damned.


End file.
